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Getting Ready for RFID

If the amount of data generated from RFID equals the hype, DBAs should take cover, writes Database Topic Center editor Lisa Vaas. In the meantime, here are some ways to get ready for the data onslaught.

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Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: If the quantity of data that eventually pours out of RFID technology is half as voluminous as the recent spate of vendor announcements and their concurrent hot-air hype, every DBA in the land should take cover.

Granted, there are still plenty of questions about the potential ROI of RFID. As Larry Dignan wrote in "Baseline," one of eWEEKs sister publications, the tags remain expensive, as they hover above the goal of 5 cents. Not only that, Dignan noted, there simply arent many vendors producing tags that will suit the likes of mandate-setting Wal-Mart, and its unclear whether the ones who are—Intermec, Alien Technology and Matrics—can do so in the quantity needed to get the per-tag cost down to where everybody thinks it should be.

Further reading

Putting aside both the hype and the questions about ROI, one thing is certain: A good number of DBAs have to get ready to handle an RFID-generated onslaught of data. Estimates put that outflow at anywhere from 10 times to 100 times the data now being generated from similar bar-code applications.

Ouch. No wonder Oracle, with its 10g clustering message, is salivating. If I had a technology road map whose future was based on a solution for massive scaling needs, Id be cheerful about those estimates, too. At any rate, here are some things to keep in mind if youre working in an environment where RFID may be looming:

Prepare yourself for much, much larger amounts of data. You might think you currently have the right amount of employees, databases, storage and data-warehousing. If your firm is considering RFID, rethink all of those components.

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